


Kill Your Double

by Starlithorizon



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Doubles, Violence, deadly science, death of the doubles, spoilers up to ep 19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlithorizon/pseuds/Starlithorizon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few familiar faces (and some unfamiliar ones) deal with the deaths of their doppelgangers. Or, surviving the alternates in three parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dana

**Author's Note:**

> That summary is awful.  
> This fic is not.  
> You know how it is.

During the day, as the furious desert sun beat down on her skin, Dana walked. She never slowed, never wondered why she was never hungry, never thought too closely about the fact that she'd been walking for weeks along this wall and hadn't found a single break. She simply stuffed her hands in her pockets, stared obstinately at the obsidian wall to her left, and continued to walk. There was nothing but the wall, the desert sun, and the soft sound of her feet crunching against the dry grass in her path to something else. Well, hopefully. She could only hope that this long, dreary walk would lead somewhere.

At night, though, she allowed herself to stop and rest. She'd often stretch out the blanket the Man in the Tan Jacket had given to her and then curl up, shivering slightly as the desert cooled off and the moon rose. This night was no different from the other nights she'd spent in this place, trapped and searching. She was like a ghost, and sometimes, it took a fairly large rock jabbing into her side from under the blanket to remind her that, no, she wasn't dead. It felt like it sometimes, but Dana was alive.

Probably.

All she really knew for sure was that she was the real Dana, and while she might not be alive, her doppelganger was certainly dead. Her boss, the eternally kind Cecil Palmer, had helped her bury the corpse. In fact, he'd helped her do much more than bury it, going so far as to cut the pulsing, oozing black mess from her chest cavity, the one that pretended to be a heart. Things in Night Vale may be peculiar, but at least everyone had a fairly average heart.

The alternate Dana had been strange in every respect, though she (the _original_ Dana) assumed that she was the only one who saw the peculiarities. It made sense, she thought. No one knew the dark fragments in the corners of her mind like herself, and seeing them manifested like that, of course she'd be the only one to see that the other was simply _wrong_. She heard Cecil referring to her as Intern Dana (or her double), and all she wanted was to say, _I_ am _the real Dana!_ But correcting people was really difficult from the Dog Park, and she doubted Cecil was getting her texts anyway.

During the day, Dana didn't think much. All that mattered was moving on, moving forward, finding a way _out_. She couldn't let something so silly as _thought_ distract her from her purpose. So she didn't think, didn't wonder, didn't question anything. She simply walked on, eyes locked on the wall.

But at night, the quiet things she kept at bay rolled in and demanded her attention. It usually started with her mother and brother, both of whom she very much missed. She missed the smell of her mother's perfume in the living room. She missed elbowing her little brother in the ribs when he was being a pest. She missed laughter ringing out around the kitchen table like salt rings. It was hard to be this completely alone. Even before, she'd had the Man in the Tan Jacket to talk to, as well as the few other citizens who'd wandered in when the gates opened.

She sent texts and tweets into the hollow world, hoping that someone might see them, knowing that no one did. She sent little observations to her friends, reassurances that she was fine to her boss, little missives of I Miss You to her family.

Later, as the moon crawled tiredly across the sky, stars glittering defiantly in the void, she wondered. She wondered if she would ever leave this place. She wondered if she would ever see another face ever again, she wondered if anyone missed her. She hoped they did, and that her picture was pinned up in the break room with the others' missing faces. It was perhaps a bit morbid, on the same level as wishing that her family held a funeral for her, but it was comforting all the same.

After the slightly poisonous thoughts of funerals and futility, though, Dana's mind always, _always_ twisted back to the memory of her double, bloodied and bashed on the floor. This had been her first, and thus far _only_ kill, and it sat uncomfortably in her stomach. It still did, after all these many months. She knew that she'd done what she had to do, it was Dana or the double. They couldn't both exist, and the double was so terrible. The double could not be, and so she met her fate, and the business end of a stapler. Cecil had been all in a panic, but he'd understood, eventually. After he came back from that bloody place and tracked gore all over the station, he'd understood completely.

On this night, as all other nights, Dana lay awake and thought about her double. She wondered if her double had had a family. She wondered if anyone had ever loved her, tucked her into bed, placed gentle kisses on her forehead. She remembered listening to Cecil gush about her to her mother, and she wondered if her double had ever blushed under such praise like she had.

Though the double was wicked and horrible and wrong, Dana paid her respects to the unmarked grave in the Sand Wastes, grateful to have been the one to survive. Though this was no way to live, she knew that she was alive, and she was faced with every horrible, beautiful, monumental possibility her double would never get.

She fell asleep with gratitude wrapped warmly around her like desert sunlight.


	2. Barbara and Harold Salten

At night, when the moon's light filtered through their lace curtains in distorted patterns on the floor, Barbara Salten lay awake and listened to the body next to her. It was a warm body, a familiar body, one she had known since she was eighteen and falling in love for the third time in her life. It puttered around the kitchen every morning, lungs expelling a musical breath and feet shuffling in front of the stove, dancing. Its fingertips drifted lazily across her own skin sometimes, little trails of comfort and familiarity and years and years and years.

The body beside her own was familiar and strange and that terrified Barbara like nothing else. This was a woman who had grown up in Night Vale. She had seen people she loved die in terrible, extraordinary ways. She had watch people she sort of knew die in awful, perfectly ordinary ways. She'd been possessed more times than she really wanted to talk about, the void constantly hung above and around them, and life was fleeting and futile. But, in spite of living a life of courageous fear, Barbara had never known horror like this.

Horror in Night Vale was usually very obvious and outright. This was something else entirely, insidious and creeping and gentle. It was the touch of a hand that wasn't entirely right. It was subtle, probably perfectly benign, but it stayed stuck in her skin like a goathead thorn biting into tender soles. She slept with horror and a body just so slightly strange in her bed.

When the doubles came, the radio host pleading with the citizens not to fight with their doubles, Barbara and Harold had huddled in the living room together. That hadn't lasted very long. She distinctly remembered seeing Harold, or maybe his double, fall, face destroyed and heart gone still. And now, years later, Barbara still had no idea whether this man in her bed was the Harold she had fallen in love with and married. He felt like an impersonation of himself, skin stretched a bit strangely over his skeleton. She didn't want to think that it might be the case, because she still loved him deeply and warmly, but it was out of reflex. Loving Harold, or his doppelganger, was a knee-jerk reaction. There was no way she could live in a world where she _didn't_ love him. There simply _wasn't_ a world where she didn't love him. It was as impossible as imagining a round square or mountains.

So Barbara Salten lay awake every night for years and years, feeling the uncertain warmth at her side, wondering if the man beside her was her husband or his double. She wondered in idle hours why her alternate had never come, and whether she was sharing a life with a stranger.

* * *

Harold knew that his wife had doubts about him. He felt it in the skittering hesitation of her touch, of the way she stared a little too long over breakfast, of the way he once caught her clutching an old photo album as though trying to absorb it. It broke his heart to see her looking so out of place, though she had no idea just _how_ out of place she truly was. He wasn't sure where she came from, and he even entertained ideas that she hadn't existed until the sandstorm blew into town. Harold didn't know if she even _had_ a place.

So long ago, when he dust and sand and wind screamed into existence, Harold met their doubles. Well, mostly. His doppleganger had come first, using the key in his pocket to unlock the front door and walk right in. He and Barbara had fought the alternate Harold fiercely, and eventually, he'd managed to shoot the damned thing's face off. Barbara...she'd come later. The alternate had screamed fitfully as she killed his wife, hiccuping sobs breaking in through shouts and broken sounds. She didn't want to kill her double, or, in this case, her original. But there was something about it that made it seem so automatic and instinctual. She'd killed the original Barbara then promptly collapsed.

He buried the bodies quickly and quietly, covering them with flowers and vegetables in later months.

When the alternate Barbara woke, she had no memory of killing the original. She remembered the lie of hiding in the living room with Harold, and the lies of childhood and first loves. She had taken his wife's memories, but she hadn't taken her certainty.

It killed Harold to know that the body in his bed was one that had stolen his wife's identity, but he loved her all the same. With the face he'd grown old with and eyes that still went soft and warm when he danced with her in the kitchen, he had no choice to love her. It was a love at arms-length, though she never noticed, busy as she was doubting his own veracity.

It was a love like slowly dying.


	3. Carlos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as angsty and dark as the other two chapters, this one... This one is _dark_. Proceed with either caution or wild abandon—your call.

Carlos hadn't known what to expect, he really hadn't. After all, he had seen sandstorms before, and none of them had resulted in hostile body doubles. He wondered, of course he did, he was a scientist. He never did anything but question things, even in a town where asking questions was usually more danger than it was worth (and sometimes illegal). He didn't understand how sand could coalesce into a nearly perfect duplicate, but this was Night Vale, and perfect understanding was hard to come by.

He had the radio on in the lab, Cecil's voice brushing across airwaves, a point of surety amid the howling clatter of the sandstorm. In this world of madness and impossibility, Cecil's voice was the only bit of sanity he could hold onto, and that _terrified_ Carlos. Never mind the fact that Cecil was in love with him, never mind the fact that he gazed at Carlos with abject adoration every time they spun into each other's presence, never mind any of it: Cecil reported insanity every day, and _that_ was all Carlos had to hold onto. Reminders to ignore the Dog Park, groans as advertising, personal opinions about death—all of it made Carlos want to simultaneously jump out of his skin and sag with relief. It was absurd, and he kind of loved it.

As it was, he was certain that Cecil's report on the sandstorm was all that was keeping the scientist's head above water. He talked about the violence ripping through the city as the doubles swept in on billows of sand and dust, and Carlos felt very afraid. He heard Cecil chastise his intern for grappling with her double, but who could blame her?

And then, as Cecil smoothly advertised the Home Depot, it happened. The door crashed in, sand rushing in on the wind and the entrance of the second scientist. He was coated in dust, which made sense, and blood. That certainly did not make sense. Carlos intrinsically knew that it was not his own blood, and he felt a rush of mute horror. The second Carlos grinned, and his teeth shone red.

Fighting back against a wave of nausea, Carlos rose from his huddle on the floor, ready to fight. Ready to go against the words of the strange and lovely radio host, ready to kill his double.

But, as was always the case with a scientist with only the barest shred of caution and an insatiable curiosity, he faced his double to question him. He needed to know if this blood-stained double was a perfect replica or a poorly-shaped copy molded just a bit wrong. He had to know if this wrongness was present in himself as well.

"Who are you?" he asked, voice only barely trembling, hands steady as a rock. He was surprisingly good in life-or-death situations, as Night Vale had well taught him.

The double cocked his head, absorbing the words, smiling with a mouth full of blood and sand. It was so darkly malicious that a thread of coldness dripped down his spine.

"You own a mirror, Carlos," the double said. It certainly was his voice, oozing from gore-streaked lips. "And I know you know. I know it here."

Slowly, he reached up with steady hands and tapped the side of his head, a smirk twisting his mouth. There was a wild, panic-induced thought that the radio host ( _Cecil, his name is Cecil, and he has freckles and the loveliest eyes_ ) would probably enjoy having two of him around. The scientist himself wasn't too sure, though. His double looked to be almost maniacal.

He understood that this was the manifestations of all of the terrible choices Carlos could have made, a descent into mad science and gore. He knew that this was a man made of something very dark, and he had to live with the understanding that he had some of that darkness within him, that his duplicate had been bred of the terrible things lurking in his head.

"You're not me," he choked out, rifling through his mental catalog of the lab. He knew there were several very corrosive samples eating their ways through the beakers in the cabinet. It wasn't enough to do the job, but nearly. It could do enough damage.

Oh, god, he hoped.

"Then what am I, if not you?" the bloodied echo asked, smile spreading across his face like the plague.

"A fucking abomination." Carlos twisted around and yanked open the cabinet, snatching up the covered beaker. He threw the watch glass aside, heard it shatter a world away, and threw the contents into the double's face. It was a strong acid, similar to hydrofluoric acid, and it had come from the snarling plants in the gardening section at Target. He'd collected so much, drained these plants of this corrosive fluid, and now he'd gone and blinded his alternate.

God, what was Night Vale turning him into?

As the double screamed with his own voice, clawing at his eyes and gasping, Carlos knew. It was in his bones, and it was in the creases of his palm as he folded it around a scalpel. And before he could listen to the horror striking up a terrible and constant scream in the back of his head, he sliced his double's throat. Blood gushed, hot and red and spurting, and still his doppelganger _did not die_. He would, though, in a pool of blood, breath wet and searching and fleeting. Carlos would kneel beside the dying double, the scalpel clattering from his fist and his hands frantically moving to close the wound, to stop his horrible gasping.

When the doppelganger finally died, Carlos cried and ran his bloodied hands along his face and through his hair, rocking slightly and absolutely shaken with the knowledge that he had killed someone. He had purposefully and violently ended someone's life, and that they had been a warped copy of himself was no better.

When the sandstorm died off, the Sheriff's Secret Police officer who lurked beneath the window of either his lab or his house helped him to bury the corpse, making no remark on the state of him. He knew his hair was standing in wild tufts of dried blood and panic, and the less said, the better he could handle what had happened.

They dropped the last shovelful of dirt over the body, and the officer walked Carlos back to his house, ordering him to get in the shower right away and then go to bed.

He slept for fourteen hours, and in the morning, he walked with the knowledge that he had willfully ended a life and he was still fundamentally the same. For the first time in his life, he knew, he _knew_ that he was capable of murder and it instilled a horrific sort of confidence within him. He walked with the certainty that he could kill this town before it killed him, and _damn_ if it didn't feel good.

* * *

Yes, the sandstorm had scrubbed the town of its impurities, leaving the citizens' skin raw and waiting for the horror to leach in and change them. Bodies were replaced. People were drastically changed. Some didn't change at all. But there was something new and heavy in the town, and it smelled like blood.


End file.
